Subarnarekha (1962) is often described as Ritwik Ghatak's critique of Partition but that is just an understatement. There is a lot more actually happening in the film. A lot more that is said without being said. The film is in fact Ghatak's meditation on human beings and their condition under cyclic churning wheels of history. It about people going through same deceptive loops over and over again. According to the film, the wheel of history is mechanised, predictable. People would go through the same story over and over again. Failures leading to hopes, false hopes and fallen hopeless people getting up and and running again towards the golden shore, beyond which lies a paradise. We only make fresh mistakes with every fresh beginning. The cycles forever going.

In the first few minutes of the film the directors lays before us the process by which the film will emphasis this cyclic churning of history. We hear about Gandhi's death, an unseen man exclaims, 'Hai Ram…

A parody poster starring Nirad Chaudhuri as Churchill. 1983. Published in Weekly SUN. It was in response to Attenborough's Gandhi. Came across it in 'Laughing Matters: Comic Tradition in India' (1987 ) by Lee Siegel.